It is essential to continually be assessing your students for understanding the content that you are teaching them. While it is important also to assess your students’ summatively, I think that formative assessment is more critical. Because if you are not continually allowing your students to practice for the summative assessment, you are doing them a disservice. Since you are not preparing them for the summative assessment, formative assessments are essential because, as the teacher, this will show you where your students are struggling. You can make adjustments to help with their understanding before the summative assessment.

Examples of how I would us Formative Assessments in my Classroom:

Example 1: 7-3.4: Explain how the Industrial Revolution caused economic, cultural, and political changes around the world.

Explain in a presentation (PowerPoint, Prezi, Flipgrid, etc.) how the Industrial Revolution caused economic changes around the world.

I would have my students create a presentation to allow them to do something different and to learn about new technology. By having my students explain in a presentation about the Industrial Revolution and it’s economic changes, this would show me whether they understand the content or not. This assessment would give me time to go back and reteach with the students who need it or let me know that my students got it, and we can have more in-depth conversations about this or move on to the next topic.

Example 2: 6.GM.1: Find the area of right triangles, other triangles, special quadrilaterals, and polygons by composing into rectangles or decomposing into triangles and other shapes; apply these techniques in the context of solving real-world and mathematical problems.

Explain in a Flipgrid a word problem that you made up yourself using the formula for the area of right triangles. You need to show your work and solve the word problem as well. You have to comment and try two other classmates word problems as well.

I would have my students use Flipgrid to share this assignment. Because this would show me who understands the area of right triangles, who needs help writing and solving word problems, and this would allow the students to solve word problems that their classmates made up and offer suggestions as well. I think that collaboration is critical for middle school students, and it is incredibly beneficial in a Math classroom.